Today we celebrate the festival of All Saints and All Souls, and of course it’s the Feast Day of our church because of the name it has been given. What’s important to realize is that All Saints / All Souls is not only about our church, rather it’s about the Church in general, the assembly…
Proper 25(B) – Mark 10: 46-52
The passage of the Gospel we have just heard comes at the end of Chapter 10 in Mark’s Gospel. If you have noticed, we have read quite a bit of Chapter 10 in the past weeks: Two weeks ago, with the story of the rich man coming to ask Jesus what he needed to do…
Proper 23 (B) – Mark 10: 17-31
I would like to start today by presenting you a book that I found quite inspiring. It’s called “Dangerous Prayers” by Pastor Craig Groeschel, and the subtitle is “Because Following Jesus Was Never Meant to be Safe“. It’s quite a funny book, actually. Groeschel starts with explaining how, when he was still a young pastor,…
St Michael and All Angels – Revelation 12: 7-12
This Sunday, we celebrate the feast of St Michael and All Angels. It was actually on Monday in our liturgical calendar, but the church authorizes us to celebrate feasts the Sunday after the date. I chose St Michael and All Angels because of the theme and the readings that I hope will give us a…
Proper 21(B) – Mark 9: 38-50
Hell, eternal fire, casting people into the sea, cutting your hand off, tearing your eye out…Well, it all made for an interesting exchange when we opened our conversation during Bible study this week after we have read this passage of the Gospel. Since we couldn’t miss the harsh, and even scary language Jesus uses, we…
Proper 19 B – Mark 8: 27-38
“If anyone want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” Last week, we talked about those passages of the Gospel that make us cringe a little bit…Well, I guess this whole denying yourself and carrying your own cross thing would be one of them! If that’s…
Proper 18(B) – Mark 7: 24-37
Today we have two stories in Mark’s Gospel that are wrapped up in the same passage: A foreign woman, a pagan, asks Jesus to heal her daughter from a demon, and then a little further, a little later, a group of people bring to Jesus a man who is deaf and mute. There are many…
Proper 17 (B) – Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23
I thought it was really cool the way we started our Bible study last Wednesday. Everybody seemed to be so excited about the reading from the Song of Solomon, the poetry of it all and how beautiful and touching it was. And then one of you asked a great question: Is it about Jesus? I…
Proper 16 (B) – John 6: 56-69
“This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?” This past Wednesday, we left our Bible study with more questions than answers after we spent some time talking about our readings for today, and especially after we spent some time talking about our Gospel. This is our fifth week in John’s chapter 6, and it does…
Proper 15(B) – Psalm 111
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111, v10a) I remember as a child having overheard an interesting conversation between my grand mother and my Dad. I can’t recall the context, if it was on my Grand mother’s birthday or on another occasion. I heard my grand mother say: Well, aging…